


Sure, Why Not?

by megdanger



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, TAZ Amnesty, canon compliant through episode 16, except for the bits that aren't, honestly episode 17 is probably going to come along and wreck this but oh well, y'all are sleeping on that Good Ned Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 14:37:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16307063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megdanger/pseuds/megdanger
Summary: Ned's always been a go-with-the-flow kind of guy, content to let life make the decisions for him. It makes things easier that way: easier to walk away, to keep things from being his responsibility, to never have to take a stand.(In which Ned Chicane, coward, dirtbag, aging thief, has no idea what he's doing in the Pine Guard, until the day he does)





	Sure, Why Not?

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes, when your favorite character doesn't get enough love, you have to crawl out of your hole to write the horrifically self-indulgent fic you want to see in the world. I haven't written fanfiction in over a decade, so be gentle.

Ned has never been one for stopping to question things, for taking a hard-line stance, not when it’s so much easier and usually also more beneficial to him to just go with the flow. Some friends persuade a younger, wilder Ned (who at this point is not called Ned) to take part in a little petty theft? Sure, why not? And it turns out he’s pretty good at it. It feels natural and right and it beats the hell out of struggling through school. So he keeps stealing to see where it takes him.

He graduates to B&E because sure, why not? And yeah, he gets caught, but he does his time quietly. At least, as quietly as Ned Chicane does anything (although he’s still not Ned, not yet). His natural charm and...we’ll be generous and call it loquaciousness, nets him enough friends with the preferable intelligence-to-muscle ratio that he gets through his first, second, and third prison stints unscathed. 

We’ll skip over the fourth one. Better left unsaid. 

He roams the country, partly out of necessity but mostly because he can’t find a compelling enough reason to stay in one place.

Then there’s that first fateful robbery-gone-wrong with Boyd. After they make their escape, Boyd offers a partnership and sure, why not? And he’s is everything Ned isn’t: blunt, practical, quietly shrewd, and happy to let Ned do all the talking (but the name Ned Chicane is still waiting offstage in the wings for its cue). And Ned and Boyd make a great team until eventually they don’t. Nothing personal, nothing serious, they just part ways, and Ned goes with the flow.

And he gets older, slower, content with small and easy jobs he would’ve scoffed at a decade ago. But then Boyd shows back up with a proposition: a risky home break-in for a big reward. And Ned thinks sure, why not?

Except that during and immediately afterward, Ned discovers several very good reasons why not. And much, much later, he inadvertently discovers another. And he tries not to think about it.

But when a crazy old lady lets him stay in the crazy old shop he literally just broke into? Sure, why not? Said old lady eventually leaves him said shop, and by now it’s more than just a creaky, leaking tourist trap. It’s a place to call his own, it’s a reason to finally stop moving and so sure, why not? Clean the place up, add some new attractions, it’ll be great. Now he’s Ned Chicane, owner of The Cryptonomica and law-abiding citizen. For the most part, anyway. 

Things are quiet for a long while after that, until suddenly, all at once, they’re not. And in the middle of all the monsters and the supernatural craziness is the Pine Guard, and Ned doesn’t understand exactly why he’s being recruited, not when there’s a magic girl who can create bursts of flame from nothing and his friend (acquaintance? Occasional drinking buddy?) Duck Newton, who’s constantly insisting that he’s just a tough guy who can take a hit despite the fact that A. He’s a garbage liar and B. It’s pretty obvious that there’s something special and strange he’s caught up in already.

There’s also the fact that he owns a talking sword.

But Ned’s just Ned and he suspects Mama inducts him into the Guard’s ranks more to keep an eye on him and make sure he stays quiet (sorry, Barclay) than for any skills he may have to offer. Because honestly, he’s on the wrong side of 40 (okay, fine, 50...possibly brushing up against 60) and unless finesse and wildly disproportionate self-confidence are magic powers, he’s got nothing.

But Ned’s the kind of guy that goes with the flow. So while Duck tries to disentangle himself from the whole mess, has to be compelled, coerced, cajoled into joining, Ned decides: sure, why not?

And despite his lifelong rationale that not bothering to fight against the currents of fate is always the better choice, there are sometimes consequences that are...let’s say less than great. But somehow the monsters aren’t as bad as being disowned, or the jail time, or the loneliness, or the last job that he hasn’t thought about in years and will not _will not_ think about now. Or they’re at least a hell of a lot more interesting.

And if Ned was the self-aware type (which he is not), he’d see how this willingness to go along with whatever comes his way has always kept things simple, kept them from being his responsibility, made it easy to walk away, to only have to watch out for himself (sorry, Boyd). 

Except.

Except now there’s Aubrey and she’s hilarious and amazing with her exuberance and wild energy and a flair for the dramatic that would remind him of a younger Ned if younger Ned hadn’t been a selfish, dirtbag thief. And some people in town would say he still carries those qualities but Aubrey likes him anyway, likes wandering the Cryptonomica, has to touch everything, a big cheesy grin on her face all the while, and is always thrilled to help out with Saturday Night Dead. Long before he overhears Aubrey’s terrible, sickeningly familiar story while lying semi-conscious in a hospital bed, Ned knows he has no right to have a friend as great as Aubrey Little. 

And there’s Duck, who’s always at least put up with him before but now it seems like they really are friends, however begrudgingly (to be fair, Duck does everything begrudgingly). He takes Ned out for french onion soup and stumbles his way through all the worries and fears and feelings simmering beneath the surface of both the man and the soup and Duck trusts him with all these vulnerabilities and that’s something Ned’s pretty sure no one’s ever done before.

Trusted him, that is.

And the man with no real name, no real home, no real friends, now has all of these things, and they’ve become so important without him even realizing. Important enough that he stops and digs his heels in against the current, that suddenly he’s driving down mountainsides, crashing his car (sorry, Ruby), flinging himself at Pizza Hut signs, and diving into the heart of a watery abomination. 

Because he cares about Aubrey and Duck and Mama and Barclay and all the sylphs, even Jake Cool-Ice for god’s sake, and Kirby and all of quiet, tiny, stupid Kepler. And he doesn’t want to drift away from any of it.

And then, eventually, a day comes that brings a real sonuvabitch of an abomination with it. It’s all teeth, claws, muscle, and meanness in a looming, shifting, mass. At the lodge, Barclay’s fingers quickly dart across the keyboard of Thacker’s ancient computer and he haltingly reads what the Pine Guard has already sussed out from an encounter they barely escaped from: that this thing is strong, incredibly so, and that to stop it, they’ll need a special weapon from Sylvain and even then, it’ll be close. If they all take it on together, they just might make it out alive. If one of them tries to face it alone, well, Thacker had compiled some unpleasantly graphic details that Barclay chooses to convey with a painful wince.

So they make their plan, as much as they ever plan anything. If there’s one thing these three very different individuals have in common, it’s their inability to make a solid plan and stick to it even a little (Ned would phrase this differently, would say that the team’s strength is their ability to improvise).

But even so, they decide not to split up like they usually do and instead will head to Sylvain together to meet with the weird giant cat that doesn’t understand how hilarious its name is, get the weapon, return to Kepler, and kick this thing’s ass. 

Hopefully.

But it doesn’t work out that way (and Duck is the only one of them with enough self-awareness to notice that nothing they do ever seems to work out the way it’s supposed to). Instead, they’re faced with the abomination before they can even get to Sylvain, stuck at the edge of the forest, out of options. 

Somehow, in the middle of dodging, fighting, fire-blasting, but really mostly just running, Duck has time to bark at Ned and Aubrey to head to the gate, saying that he’ll distract the abomination and give them as much time as he can. He’s tough, he can do it, it’s his job to take the big hits. And Ned, Ned the coward, Ned-the-go-with-the-flow knows that he should listen and just do what he’s always done. 

Except.

Except Ned knows that if they leave Duck behind, he’s gonna die, no matter how magically tough he is. And so he can’t. Not this time. 

Because while he may just be Ned Chicane, thief, dirtbag, and one-time owner of a very cool car, Aubrey and Duck are different. They’re powerful, they’re special, but more than that, they’re _good_ and Ned knows that if Duck hadn’t volunteered just now that Aubrey would be doing it instead. And even as he’s gone along with all of it, hasn’t questioned it, he’s never understood what exactly he’s doing in the Pine Guard with these two. But now, at this moment, he does, and after a too-close swipe causes him to tuck-and-roll across dead leaves that crunch underneath his back he yells at Duck to cut it out with that martyr shit and make a run for the gate with Aubrey.

And of course he argues, he’s Duck Newton and as far as he’s concerned it’s his job to protect them and how in the hell are they even managing to have this conversation over the roar of a very pissed-off abomination that’s just taken a slice from Beacon to its side? 

There isn’t time for one of Ned’s drawn-out, dramatic pronouncements, for any monologue about bravery or heroism or whatever kind of bullshit he would usually do. There’s barely even any time to make it clear to Duck that that’s the point, that Mama and Barclay and the sylphs and Kepler, they _need_ Duck and Aubrey. To take the big hits, to work some magic, to protect everyone. Ned’s just Ned, and that’s why it needs to be him.

Another angry swipe and a tree goes down with an echoing crack, barely missing Aubrey. She hurls a ball of fire that briefly blinds the monster, leaves it blinking and howling in anger. Ned yells for them to go and finally, _finally_ they listen to him and take off running toward the gate. Aubrey looks back, and her face has always plainly shown what she’s feeling, there’s not a cagey bone in her body and that wide open face is twisted in worry and Ned feels a flash of shame and guilt that he’s never told her about that night and the robbery and...well, either way, it doesn’t matter now.

The abomination starts to turn in the direction of Aubrey and Duck but Ned hurls a rock at it, shouts at it, taunts it, getting its attention back on him. It works and his insides are frozen solid in fear but as he holds up the magic gun that’s just as completely ridiculous as he is and takes aim, he has a moment of self-awareness and realizes that in a weird way, it all makes perfect sense.

Ned Fuckin’ Chicane, going up alone against a terrifying, vicious abomination?

Sure, why not?


End file.
